PETITION TO RECALL OFF TO SWIFT START

Signature-gatherers fan out across city; recall backers converge on City Hall

All politicians and agencies experience rough patches — what Rita Vandergaw, a former Port of San Diego executive, called “debacles.”

“The Port had its debacles,” said Vandergaw, who retired this year. “But this is unique for its sheer audacity, for the mayor’s lack of feeling for other people.”

For some of the fastest people in San Diego, this debacle couldn’t end soon enough.

“He’s a bad reflection on the city,” Gerard Buckmelter, the 56-year-old manager of an aerospace company, said after logging a personal best (one hour, 32 minutes, 14 seconds) on the America’s Finest City course. “If this happened in the corporate world, he’d be gone by now, no question.”